Newcastle Short Story Award 2018 now open

Time to crack those knuckles and start working on your short story over the holidays!

The Newcastle Short Story Award 2018 is now open for entries, with a word limit of 2000 words.

Main prize is a handsome $2000, but with several highly commended cash prizes, a wine voucher and more up for grabs, there are plenty of opportunities to win.

The award is brought to you by the Hunter Writers Centre and is open to Australian citizens or permanent residents. You don’t have to be a member of the Hunter Writers Centre to enter.

According to the media release: “The top 35 works will be published in the 2018 anthology”.

For the 2018 prize, one of the judges is Isabelle Li, author of the short story collection A Chinese Affair, published in 2016. The other judge, Ryan O’Neill, is the author of The Weight of a Human Heart and Their Brilliant Careers, ​shortlisted for the 2017 Miles Franklin Literary Award and Fiction winner of the 2017 NSW Premier's Literary Awards. You can check out our interviews with Isabelle and Ryan on our blog.

In 2016, Alison Kelly took out first prize with her story, The Blink Response.

Entries close 5 February 2018.

To find out more and to enter, head to the Hunter Writers Centre website.